“Only useless Kings get to blame their endless advisers; elected leaders have no one but themselves to blame.” Great long read from @lawrencenewport.bsky.social on the PM vs the Blob unherd.com/2026/04/star...

I lived through the saga of 'levelling up' at the Treasury. The worst thing that could happen to your policy was someone pointing out that it could create regional inequalities. Few people had the heart to point out that we already have profound ones. Lotteries are good - you can win them!

It's easy to feel that long-running policy problems are unfixable. But I'm more optimistic than Rachel that we can find a way out of the nightmarish political economy of social care funding if we design policies carefully. Great to see our paper 'Beyond caring' covered in the New Statesman.

Absolutely barnstorming first week back at Re:State after a month of paternity leave last week. And just in time for us to get our new model for social care funding published! This is a must-read paper from Simon and Alice.

What connects doctor strikes, government security vetting, local elections and NHS data? They are all covered in my Re:View for this week! Have a read.

Fifteen years of consensus on the principles of the Dilnot Commission have gotten us nowhere. We are right back at square one. Tomorrow, we are breaking with the past and putting forward a different solution for the social care funding crisis. Standby.

“Sovereignty”, “regulating for growth”, “social investment” Policy memes are ideas which take a life of their own and are repeated across Whitehall with little thought. We’ve been cataloguing them for 3 years @re-state.bsky.social, here are mine for 2026 ⬇️ restate.substack.com/p/policy-mem...

The Met have tried to block a premier jazz club from opening a new branch with a license until 1:00AM. It’s really sad that the police see their job as preventing Londoners having a good time. Every international city I go to has a better nightlife than London now.

A new London Bridge would be a sign of urban progress which London’s skyline desperately lacks. Opening up new urban spaces would allow the development to be funded through land value capture. Good to see Ben Judah calling for the project. open.substack.com/pub/benjudah...

A new London Bridge would be a sign of urban progress which London’s skyline desperately lacks. Opening up new urban spaces would allow the development to be funded through land value capture. Good to see Ben Judah calling for the project. open.substack.com/pub/benjudah...

Independent economic scrutiny is vital to better policymaking. Great to see our research on the importance of the RPC's role covered in The Economist.

🚨NEW REPORT - The law of rule🚨 Britain’s regulatory system grows by default. Rules are easy to create, rarely reviewed, and almost never removed. This report sets out a package of reforms to achieve “better regulation” by strengthening the system at every stage.

Successive governments have lost control of regulation. The Government risks repeating this pattern. Today, we @re-state.bsky.social have published ‘The law of rule’, calling for an overhaul of the Better Regulation Framework and more independent scrutiny. re-state.co.uk/publications...

This weekend's Sunday Times profile is getting a lot of attention, but the concern that No10 lacks a "theory of power" is the most important bit. The big bureaucratic states which developed countries built in the 20th century have made many of them (including Britain) ungovernable in the 21st.

The Regulatory Policy Committee is one of the most important public bodies. It’d be a big mistake if @rcolvile.bsky.social is right and the Government are planning to scrap it. I wrote about why the RPC is the most important quango you have never heard of here open.substack.com/pub/restate/...

New hard edged law: no column or analyst note is ever allowed to contain a phrase like "whether X or Y happens remains up be seen/only time will tell". Literally the most empty-headed non thought you could possibly commit to paper.

All governments say they want “better regulation”. An easy way for them to do that is to give more powers to the Regulatory Policy Committee - the most important quango that most people have never heard of. I’ve written about it at @re-state.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/restate/...

It’s a shame to see standards sliding backward on open competition of roles in the senior civil service.

The Re:View is out! 🎉 This week, Director of Policy and Research, @stkaye.bsky.social unpacks the Government’s latest move in the devolution agenda, as the MHCLG seeks to “fill in the map” of England with a new wave of Strategic Authorities. 👉Read it here: bit.ly/4auVwuB

London needs a chief executive, not an ambassador. For my column in CityAM this week, I've written about how our research @re-state.bsky.social shows the Mayor of London is under-powered and needs to level-up so the city stops punching below its weight. www.cityam.com/london-doesn...

V exciting to have shifted our @re-state.bsky.social blog, Re:Think, to Substack. Even more exciting to have such a corker for a first post from @jo3hill.bsky.social dissecting why mission government has failed 👇 substack.com/home/post/p-...

Four our first Re:Think blog on Substack, @jo3hill.bsky.social has written about why 'mission government' seems to have failed, why it matters, and what should come next. restate.substack.com/p/why-missio...

Why 'mission government' failed. For our first long read on Substack, I've written about why the Government's philosophy of missions has sunk without a trace, why that matters, and what comes next. restate.substack.com/p/why-missio...

Always nice to read about the @re-state.bsky.social team’s research on my commute!

Huge day as we launch our first paper of 2026 - a deep dive into how to fix London's government!

London has 33 boroughs. Paris has 20, Berlin has 12, New York has just five. This matters because in London the boroughs hold all the power & they are too fragmented to act city-wide. It's time to change that. Our report 'Capital at risk', calls for centralising power in London.

We've moved to Substack! Our popular newsletter, the Re:View, and our blog Re:Think are now both hosted on the platform. If you don't subscribe, this is the best place to go for big-picture ideas about remaking public services. First up this week, @stkaye.bsky.social on govt policing reforms.

How to rebuild Hammersmith Bridge. New from me for the Greater London Project. We're supporting Looking for Growth's campaign to get Hammersmith Bridge reopened for everyone. www.greaterlondon.co/p/a-bridge-t...

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. For this week's Re:View, I wrote about why the Government should pay attention to the failures of past attempts to regulate better for innovation and growth!

Great to see Mel Stride quoting research from our @re-state.bsky.social paper 'Making the grade' on the absence of good performance management in the civil service. It's demoralising to the best officials that they get treated the same as the worst ones - this needs to change! Paper linked below!

The sharply bimodal response to Paul Ovenden's piece represents a real political divide. Not between right and left. But between those who think shifting power from politicians to bureaucrats, quangos and courts was right, and those who see it as central to our problems.

As we sum up 2025 in policy, have a read to find out our: 💬 Quotes of the year 🔢 Stats of the year 👍 Best policies of the year 👎 Worst policies of the year ... along with seeing who got our Reformer of the Year and Reactionary of the Year awards!

Twelve days to remake the State! Over the next twelve (working) days we're going to be publishing our own twelve ideas to remake the State, to make sure our festive season isn't without a dash of public service reform! Day 1 is Sean on why Britain needs Governors.

Feel like you missed the highlights (and lowlights) of the Chancellor's Budget yesterday? Don't worry, we have you covered! Our Re:Act analysis covers the main measures, and what our team made of them.

And that’s the Budget! Read our Re:Act to find out where we think the Chancellor has ducked the big decisions, and where the jury is still out.

Easy to miss on Budget day, but the supporting documents are always the best bit. Pleased to have contributed a little to this one, and glad to see the Treasury taking up the reforms of liberalising many spending controls which we've written about at @re-state.bsky.social.

The UK has some of the most successful businesses in the world - with the right policy approach, I believe we could 10x this. Real privilege to be looking at this over the course of events in partnership with Workday.

The NHS has failed to contain the growth of hospitals and inpatient care over more suitable settings. The growth of resources in secondary care has outstripped demand for two decades. Important from @rosiebeacon.bsky.social in our final 'Hospital of the future' paper re-state.co.uk/publications...

Procurement markets are very strange when you think about it. For our Re:Think blog, I've written the 'Policy Director's cut' of our procurement reform paper published last week.

The Government is writing cheques it can't afford with this Budget - particularly now the Chancellor is meant to be ripping up her income tax plans. Great piece from @charliepickles.bsky.social in the Telegraph

The 'write round' process used in Whitehall is arcane, but it serves a purpose - failing to make Cabinet smaller, you need them to take decisions together. There's much more you could do to speed up Whitehall - consultations for a start! www.politicshome.com/news/article...

Sadly yesterday was @rosiebeacon.bsky.social's last day at @re-state.bsky.social. She leaves a great legacy in our really influential health policy programme. Glad she left us with this absolute banger of a blog about the dangerous policy memes in health prevention. re-state.co.uk/rethink/five...

So proud of the team today. First place for Think Tanker and second for Think Tank of the Year. We're a tiny (9 people), scrappy think tank with limited resources, risking saying what we really think. Hall of Famer Dirk Nowitzki once described JJ Barea as 'undersized, but all heart'. That's us.

Really pleased to win Think Tanker of the Year at the Smart Thinking Awards last night. Big thanks to @charliepickles.bsky.social and @stkaye.bsky.social for taking a chance on hiring me in the first place. It’s been a wild two years in wonk land at @re-state.bsky.social!

We need doctors with more specialist training in the kind of general medical issues that end up in secondary care. Great piece from @alicesemark.bsky.social in the HSJ on the case for change. www.hsj.co.uk/quality-and-...

One sixth of the economy is the government buying from the private sector, and it's a mess. If the Government wants a more dynamic and high-growth economy, it should start in its own backyard. | More in my column for @cityam.bsky.social today www.cityam.com/if-the-chanc...

Report launch eve @re-state.bsky.social!

"Buckaroo" policy is a dangerous close cousin of Everythingism, which paralyses politics by making every policy serve every other policy. Great to read about it in The Economist this morning!

Lots of factors at play in the continual shake-ups of No10, but clearly one is a profound frustration with the civil service. Removing the Cab Sec and replacing him someone who has prev been a political appointee would send a clear message about the future of Whitehall.

Loved hosting this panel at Conservative Party Conference on remaking the State!